This Weekend's Fixtures & Midweek Fixtures (20/21/22/24/25 May).

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Originally Posted by Letters

You really need to stop including Brighton and Forest. We'd stopped bothering by then. I'm not defending that, but I honestly think they gave up when it was clear City weren't going to slip up. The other 4 where we slipped, sure. We should have won those. But you're going to get slips here and there. And some of those are offset by some good wins, notably at St James' Park where I think most of us expected dropped points. And those slips only account for 9 points. I don't think that would have been enough. It would have given the final table, but City had the flip flops out in the last 2 games having wrapped up the title and with Cup Finals to consider.

The big issue for us, aside from City winning a billion games in a row, was the head to heads. But...well, City are just better than us. Overall it's the fact we didn't push them to the last day that rankles with me. There were brief moments where I thought we could do it, but those moments were predicated on us getting certain results or City slipping and it never quite happened.

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No I especially include Brighton and Forest…for me they are almost more unacceptable than the other games. I can understand the fear involved with chasing a title and that accounts for games like West Ham and Southampton. Brighton despite your insistence to the contrary was about tactical ineptitude…we allowed Brighton to play their game at the Emirates (lack of plan B I alluded to in another thread) and Forest was just Arteta throwing out a tactical fuck you.

I don’t know how clearer I can make this, you push City every step of the way…make them have to focus on getting the wins against Brighton and Brentford the two games that were their hardest right at the end of the season. Might they have won them both had they not already been champions? Possibly but no guarantee…make them fucking sweat for it in two difficult away games.

We didn’t do that, I’m fucking furious…for all the back and forth it’s as simple as that

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Originally Posted by HCZ_Reborn

No I especially include Brighton and Forest…for me they are almost more unacceptable than the other games.

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To me they are completely unacceptable. I can accept slips in games here and there when you have City bearing down on you, winning every game. But just to give up like that was pathetic.

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I don’t know how clearer I can make this, you push City every step of the way….

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Which I have said numerous times. My real annoyance is we didn't push them to the final day. My gut feeling is they'd have won it anyway - they did it twice against Liverpool when they pushed them all the way. But make them win it, don't just give it to them. I don't even know what we are arguing about, we're saying the same thing here.

Even if you were of the opinion that City would have pipped us anyway, I don’t think anyone quite expected it to be the anti-climactic procession that it was. That’s where the real disappointment of this season lies.

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Originally Posted by Marc Overmars

Even if you were of the opinion that City would have pipped us anyway, I don’t think anyone quite expected it to be the anti-climactic procession that it was. That’s where the real disappointment of this season lies.

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Exactly, it's not been good enough, I just hope Arteta, the team and the club learn their lessons

I literally keep saying that. :shrug:

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Originally Posted by Letters

I literally keep saying that. :shrug:

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But when you serve it with a big dollop of Fatalism (oh what do you expect with city etc) don’t be surprised that, that’s all anyone can taste

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Originally Posted by HCZ_Reborn

But when you serve it with a big dollop of Fatalism (oh what do you expect with city etc) don’t be surprised that, that’s all anyone can taste

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The idea that City would have mown us down anyway is not contradictory to the idea that our capitulation made it far too easy for them in the end. Come on dude, this isn’t rocket salad. Surely people on here can cope with both those things being true.

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Originally Posted by Letters

The idea that City would have mown us down anyway is not contradictory to the idea that our capitulation made it far too easy for them in the end. Come on dude, this isn’t rocket salad. Surely people on here can cope with both those things being true.

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One I don’t think it’s necessarily true. When you’re five points clear with nine games remaining. There’s no inevitability that City would win, just like it wasn’t inevitable and in fact didn’t happen that one of the bigger clubs would overtake Leicester in 2016. Winning the title was far from an impossibility

Two it’s irrelevant to the discussion. All that matters is what we do, I’ve pointed out till I’m blue in the face where we went wrong and it’s got little or nothing to do with City.

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Originally Posted by HCZ_Reborn

One I don’t think it’s necessarily true. When you’re five points clear with nine games remaining. There’s no inevitability that City would win, just like it wasn’t inevitable and in fact didn’t happen that one of the bigger clubs would overtake Leicester in 2016. Winning the title was far from an impossibility

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Well of course. It wasn't a given City would win it. As you say, we were 5 points ahead with 9 games left. BUT those 9 games for us included Liverpool, Newcastle and City away. So the 5 points wasn't the commanding lead some in the "Arsenal bottled it" camp are trying to pretend. It was always likely we'd drop points. My hope was that City would get distracted by the CL and slip up here and there too but they just didn't. So it's with the hindsight that City just won every game including the head to head that I say that given our run in it was pretty likely that City were going to mow us down in the end.

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Two it’s irrelevant to the discussion. All that matters is what we do, I’ve pointed out till I’m blue in the face where we went wrong and it’s got little or nothing to do with City.

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You're not saying anything revolutionary or insightful here. It was in our hands so yes, of course that means it doesn't matter what City did. And yes, we slipped up in games we shouldn't have. That made City's task easier.
But even if we'd won the West Ham and Southampton games - which I agree we should have - we'd still have been below City on GD in the run in given that they just kept winning. Obviously you can look back to other games - we shouldn't be losing away at Everton, but City shouldn't be losing at Spurs. They shouldn't lose at home to Brentford. You can play that game in any season.

I'm disappointed we didn't win the league, of course I am. It's the first season for a long time where I really felt we could. I don't even remember thinking that in 2016 although looking back at the table at various points last season we were closer to Leicester than I remembered. Being ahead for so long and not winning it is disappointing and I can't see us getting a better chance any time soon. But City have developed the annoying ability to get their slips out of the way in the first half of the season and then just go on long winning runs when it matters. My real annoyance with Arsenal this year, as I also keep saying till I'm blew in the face, is that we just gave up and handed it to them. I'm annoyed at the slips too but to just give up after City beat Everton is unacceptable.